Talk:Challenge rating
Monster difficulty categories What do the CR ratings (e.g. Impossible (purple): 5 or more levels higher) compare the creature CR to? The level of the player, the highest level character in the party, the number of party members added to the previous two, or something else? WhiZard 04:07, October 3, 2009 (UTC) *EDIT: Actually its not creature CR but its character level/HD compared to player character's character level. --ShaDoOoW 13:01, November 9, 2011 (UTC) :*So CR is only for kill XP. Given player characters have a CR of 0 it would not be useful anywhere in monster AI. WhiZard 19:44, November 9, 2011 (UTC) :*Actually my test with a level one character vs. a level one creature with an exceptionally large number of hit points, showed as purple (impossible). I think CR is being used as hit dice does not justify this. WhiZard 22:03, November 9, 2011 (UTC) ::*You are right. My later edit was incorrect, its a long time I was working with it as a most servers these days doesn't show this information. Anyway there is still more purposes of CR. I believe (but hardcoded, hard to test) its used in bioware spawn encounters (I think you read my post on bioware forum right). :::Also not only creatures has CR, a spell does too. A CR of a spell is (InnateLevel*2)-1. --ShaDoOoW 23:30, November 9, 2011 (UTC) :::* Aah, I meant CR as it would be corresponding to GetChallengeRating(), not considering non-objects (whose CR is used in the calculation of the CR of an object). And yes CR would make sense for spawns, though I have always been meaning to test the spawn dynamics I have never gotten around to it. WhiZard 03:29, November 10, 2011 (UTC) :::* Spells do not have challenge ratings. Spells contribute to the challenge rating of a creature, but spells themselves are not opponents to be defeated. --The Krit 18:44, November 10, 2011 (UTC) Walk rate algorithm dynamics In the CR adjustment recorded in the line "[ (hit points before constitution and feat bonuses) / (average hit points) ] * 0.2 * HD * (creature walk rate) / (player character walk rate) " can the relative walk rates impacted by either hasting or slowing of either the PC or the hostile NPC change the overall static CR rating (and potentially, the subsequent XP rewards) and, if so, does it (the overall CR determination) apply only at the moment a kill occurs? It's not clear to me exactly when the CR is computed (eg. upon perception, upon attack, upon death or some other event) or if it is calculated dynamically at regular intervals somehow. TIA for any clarity about this. --Iconclast (talk) 19:02, January 25, 2015 (UTC) * I'm pretty sure challenge rating is computed based upon the creature blueprint, probably computed when the creature spawns. (Creatures that gain levels would be exceptions.) In particular, spell effects should never make a difference. For this particular adjustment, I would expect "player character walk rate" to mean "the default walk rate for player characters" not "the current walk rate of the particular player character receiving the award". --The Krit (talk) 19:55, January 25, 2015 (UTC) * CR is part of the creature template. There is no formula for its calculation, except what the Toolset uses if the creature is assembled there. This section deals with where the Toolset is getting its numbers, but the Toolset value can still be overridden, should the builder disagree with the value. As such, the walkrate is simply a 2da lookup, it would not even involve factoring in the item property haste (although that property can raise CR if on a non-skin item by virtue of being an item property). WhiZard (talk) 20:02, January 25, 2015 (UTC) :* A correction/addendum to what I said. There is an in-game method of changing challenge rating. That is when an NPC levels up (through the scripting command LevelUpHenchman()) the CR is raised by one for each level the NPC gains. This can cause the CR to become different from the Toolset value. For instance, if I were to take a level 29 epic shadowlord (summon) and put its exact statistics into the Toolset, it would be valued at a CR of 36 instead of its in game value of 31 (at level 1 the creature is valued at a CR of 3 so 28 +1 = 29 and 28 +3 = 31). The main cause of such a difference is that LevelUpHenchman() will always roll maximum HP, while the Toolset bases its value on average; thus henchman that are leveled up will tend to be undervalued when it comes to challenge rating. WhiZard (talk) 04:40, January 27, 2015 (UTC) ::* Thanks guys for clarifying how the CR functions in-game. One final question, though: Is it common for custom CRs to be established via scripting? It seems that from server-to-server, XP rewards can vary significantly for default creature kills. I am suspicious that few designers use the default "Toolset" CRs, but I could be misled by other factors. --Iconclast (talk) 18:07, January 31, 2015 (UTC) :::* Many servers have their own XP calculation systems, and even those that use the standard may have different positions for the XP slider. The SoU, for example, has a different slider position than the NWN OC. One issue that some servers struggle around is that XP is by default awarded for kills, not participation in combat. Thus several PCs that are not in the same party could be deprived of XP rewards even if they contribute to killing a monster. As far as CR, this is overridden in the Toolset, by adding a manual adjustment to the calculation. The creature blueprint just stores the total of the Toolset value + manual adjustment, so that the game does not need to recalculate anything. Some servers will have monsters leveled up by LevelUpHenchman() to reduce the number of blueprints needed; these monsters will tend to be undervalued CR-wise from what the Toolset would recommend. WhiZard (talk) 20:04, January 31, 2015 (UTC) :::* XP scale was a wanted page. I've created it and made it a little more prominent in the experience point article. Another factor to be aware of is that a module could set the XP scale to zero and give out all experience via custom scripting. At which point the challenge rating might no longer be a factor. (It's also possible that a module sets the XP scale to a nonzero value and also gives out experience via custom scripting. You'd see two distinct XP awards per kill in this case.) --The Krit (talk) 22:01, January 31, 2015 (UTC)